SDLC

SDLC

1. Software Development Life Cycle. The process of developing a software
product from conception (the requirements stage) through design,
development, testing, release and finally support and maintenance. It is
referred to as a cycle because, subsequent releases of a software product
will require each one of those stages to be visited.

The Software
Development Life Cycle will tend (see note below) the following stages:

Analysis or Requirements specification
The step of identifying what the software (or software update) needs to do.

Design
The step of identifying how to meet the requirements.

Implementation or Coding
The step of doing the work, turning the design into software to meet the
requirements.

Testing
The step of testing the produced software to ensure that it meets the
requirements.

Support and Maintenance
The step of supporting the software once it is being used by end users,
identifying and addressing bugs and other issues. This may also lead to new
requirements being identified and the software development life cycle
beginning again for those new requirements.

There are a number of different software development methodologies and
approaches, and each may have different stages (or names for those stages)
in the software development life cycle. So the above should only be treated
as a guide - all the steps above will (or should) exist regardless of the
development methodology but some may be broken into several steps, some may
introduce additional steps (for example "Installation and Acceptance") and
others may be combined or renamed and the order may be muddled (for example
Design and Implementation are often merged in smaller projects).

An alternative name for "Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)".
Although technically "Systems Development Life Cycle" refers to the
development of systems whereas "Software Development Life Cycle" refers to
the development of (just) software, the two are generally regarded as
synonymous.